Countdown to Tübingen

just like church choir.

Here at Unterwegs, we are the cutting edge of ministry… constantly experimenting, pushing, finding new ways to reach people that might be overlooked, who for traditional outreach are just out-of-reach. We are the Tesla of faith, the George Washington Carver of Jesus. For those who aren’t afraid of heights, the edge is a great place to be.

Yes, our job often requires us to take the leap of faith off the cliff of the comfort zone. Take, for instance, karaoke. Several of our students love it – just as much as we fear it. But when we were called up with our students to sing Rock Me, Amadeus by Falco – a German rap song – we put fear behind us.

It was terrible. We didn’t know the words, and we couldn’t keep up with the lyrics. And it lasted eight minutes, at least. We got booed off stage by the crowd. I mean, the standards were already pretty low – it was karaoke late at night in a college town – and we got boos from the audience. What a terrible experience.

But what a great experience. The way we bond with students during our time at karaoke – on stage and off – has opened up new conversations, deeper conversations, more personal roads. The edge is great.

the lake.

I’ve received a lot of comments as of late about the number of fun activities we here at Globalscope Germany engage in. There are grill parties, birthday parties, partying at the club, partying at student homes, games at Unterwegs, games not at Unterwegs, and singalong guitar sessions – to name a few. Are we really working on the job like we say we are in my monthly newsletters (and, just as importantly, does anybody read my newsletters)?

At this point in building a campus ministry in Germany, social life is the work. We go to the club for the same reason that fishermen go to the lake, an apropos metaphor given Jesus’ use of the fishing metaphor for the disciples. It’s where German students are.

If you need more proof, than you need only ask how dehydrated I get sweating through my two layers of shirts while I do the circle-dance with our group of students for hours at a time; or ask me how many nights I’ve had in the last month to myself; or about what time I get home after a cookout at the Unterwegs house.

The answers, in no particular order: 4am, 1 liter of water, zero.

So there’s the rub: work here is fun and games, fun and games are the work here, and work is hard. We are a great team of ministers, and if we can share Christ with students by packing into a miserable club like smoked sardines, or by not giving into our introverted tendencies for weeks at a time, or by staying out till ridiculous hours of the morning, we’ll do it. That’s worth supporting.

grown ups are kids with more expensive toys.

When I think about all the writing I have done for blog posts and newsletters, I believe too many of them start off with a thought or a clever play on words regarding the current weather conditions. Nevertheless, in just a few seconds, I will be using the weather as a starting point for making a point totally irrelevant to weather once more. Are you ready?

Nice weather we’re having.

Fifty-one degrees and rainy without a glimpse of the sun all day. It doesn’t get any better than this… in England. Ha, ha. We tease England.

As summer goes into its early death throes, it’s time to look at the climate we are setting here at Unterwegs. It’s kind of hard to know how to feel as a campus minister at this point in building a ministry… for a while now, we’ve been playing the roles of social planners, organizing parties, going out with students, hosting dinners, that kind of thing. At the same time, we’re trying to move in a deeper direction with students… talk about meaningful relationships, forgiveness, convincing them of their incredible worth.

One of the things we talked about in raising support was the global youth culture. We watch the same movies (and close our eyes during the same scary scenes), listen to the same music (well, Germans apply their techno a little more liberally), wear the same jeans (especially when it costs so much to do laundry :P). But one thing we didn’t realize while we were discussing the global culture is just how much the struggles of the global youth are the same wherever the culture goes. Kids here struggle with looks, acceptance, finding a boyfriend/girlfriend, alcohol, drugs… it’s just in German.

And there are fewer people ready for them with love and support. There are lots of churches over here, lots of campus ministries that are ready and waiting to tell people about Jesus, but there are very few who are willing to be Jesus to people. That’s where we come in.

In the last couple of weeks, as we’ve started to make the transition from party people to ministers, it’s been a mix of feelings – surprise at how much heartbreak there can be, confusion at how people react to hurt and pain, but – more than anything – shocked at how similar it all is to what we know from back in the States.

I don't care if it *is* half past noon - my day doesn't start until after this.

Living here in Germany, you learn to do without some things. For example: I don’t have a car. In its stead, I have a bike and a bus ticket. Another example: I don’t have a microwave. Rather, I have a jumbo bottle of vegetable oil and a frying pan with more mileage on it than my car, bike, and bus ticket combined. It’s Europe, baby. There are some things that – like AirTran – just don’t fly over here.

But I’ll tell you what hasn’t changed: I still love Jesus, I love my girlfriend, and I love my coffee.

Sure, instead of indie rock and hip-hop with my morning brew, now I listen to Euro-electro (read: techno), but that just goes to show: good coffee, like bad bureaucracy, is something that unites an otherwise divided and fractured human race. Sure, instead of a Morning Harvest muffin from Mighty Joe Espresso, now I have a Doppel Keks with my joe (or, if I’m feeling extra spendy, a day-old, half-price croissant from the bakery around the corner from Unterwegs), but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make…

Which leads me to ask: if, as a supporter, you really want to go the extra mile, would you please send me some coffee beans from Mighty Joe? My Quetzal Breakfast Blend stash is running out.

my place of work varies - my time of work, not so much.

I remember pulling all-nighters at Tech… The blurring of two days into one is really romanticized in movies and television. Jack Bauer, as stressful as his annual 24-hour stints are, never had to come up with a lock-and-release protocol for editing embedded documents between client and server and build a Java app around it in the span of a day. Looking back, the torture Kiefer Sutherland has suffered at the hands of the baddies is comparable – nay, preferable – to torture I suffered at the hands of the Advanced Object-Oriented Programming deadlines.

But nowadays, those all-nighters in front of the computer are no more. Instead, we spend our nights-through-mornings with students. Dancing at the club goes till 4 in the morning. Birthday parties till 5. One thing that is common among European students is that, when they hang out, they are deeply committed. Come hell or high water, we’re talking and sharing stories until the sun gets back from the other side of the Earth. The building may burn, but we are sweating it out on the crowded dance floor… we’ll just raise the roof to let in some more air.

In that sense, we’re kind of like superheroes. By day, we are unassuming paper-pushers, programmers, and manual laborers. By night, we are ministers. Yeah.

We work ’round the clock. That’s more ministry per hour for your buck. And that’s worth supporting.

and so, the sun sets on summer

It’s beautiful fall weather outside – the kind of conditions that make a guy want go inside and update his blog with an entry about the beautiful fall weather outside. Seriously, though, there is a comfort in wearing a thin sweater with a collared shirt underneath that I never really appreciated while living in Atlanta.

The next semester doesn’t start until the middle of October here in Germany. To really drive home the mistimed feeling of academic excitement for us Americans, students are just now leaving for short-term study abroad trips. While College Gameday kicks off an exciting new season in the States, we follow the Bundesliga on Sky (Go, Stuttgart!). While students buy expensive textbooks and graphing calculators at universities across the country back home, we join the few students remaining in Tu in the beer garden for a pretzel at sunset.

With just Beth and myself here leading our two new exchange students, we have entered a really exciting point in our ministry – a point at which students are emotionally invested in us and the ministry and we are emotionally invested in them in return. We share concerns for each other and with each other, Americans to Germans and Germans to Americans. Students call us when they are worried or need someone to talk to, and we worry with them and we talk it out. We are connecting, and that is exciting.